Tiki Lamps

I find baking to be more fulfilling than cooking real food because desserts require less work and produce more servings. Desserts are a nonessential food item. I suppose they're the nonessential government workers that get to stay home when there's a snowstorm or when our power grid runs out of power and they send everyone home before they start on the rolling brownouts. Trust me, brownouts are a bad thing. Imagine the Cape Cod Chip factory in a rolling brownout...all of a sudden a freshly fried crisp chip flying through the air on a projectile to land in a bag misses the bag and falls on the ground because the electricity turned off. [Tragic] Dinner is like the doctors who stay in the emergency room or firefighters. It doesn't really matter if you don't have dessert; it's just kind of nice to eat dessert. Desserts are kind of like movie stars and celebrities. They're not substantive, but they're pleasing to the palate.

Back to my point about tiki lamps, baking is inexpensive and for the items that cost more than a pittance, I'm always on the lookout for deals and I always stock up. I once stashed away ten pounds of Land O' Lakes Butter when the price dipped below $2. I've since stopped doing that because I don't think my roommates appreciated the month when butter filled a significant portion of our fridge. Trader Joe's is great for stocking up on baking supplies. I've switched from Ghirardelli chocolate chips to Trader Joe's chocolate chips and I try to buy my butter there because quality and price are inversely related, high in quality and low in price.

Finally, let's talk about the tiki lamps. Ironically Trader Joe's were a dime a dozen where I grew up. They were everywhere, but I never really shopped at Trader Joe's until I moved to New England. I had this childhood misconception that Trader Joe's only sold tiki lamps and Hawaiian shirts. I suppose it's part of their theme, but I never knew they were a food store and I was convinced they sold weird South Seas tourist imports such as grass skirts and I wanted to have nothing to do with it. Now that I've mended my childish ways, I love Trader Joe's.